Greenwood nursing homes will soon be charged fees for non-emergency calls and non-emergency lift assistance calls by the fire department.
The Greenwood City Council voted 8-0, with member Michael Williams absent, to allow the Greenwood Fire Department to charge fees for non-emergency calls, along with non-emergency lift assistance calls, at residential care facilities — skilled nursing homes and nursing facilities, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, long-term care facilities and extended-care facilities. The fees will be issued by the fire chief or his designee for each incident determined to be a non-emergency response or a non-emergency lift assist, city documents show.
For a first, second or third offense each year, the fee will be $500 per non-emergency response or non-emergency lift assist. For a fourth or subsequent offense each year, the fee doubles to $1,000 per non-emergency response or non-emergency lift assist. The fees could be waived if a call was later determined to have been made non-emergency in error, according to city documents.
The fee ordinance was amended Monday night, but only to fix typographical errors. It was a unanimous vote to amend it.
Greenwood is not the only Central Indiana community that has proposed fees for these types of calls this year. Both New Whiteland and Westfield moved to impose fees on residential care facilities this past summer.
In Greenwood’s case, the fees for these types of calls are being proposed based on data compiled by the fire department. GFD has been monitoring their call volume and types of calls, and an anomaly that has stood out is the calls to residential care facilities, Fire Chief Jayme Washel told the city council earlier this month.
Through July of this year, GFD has had 5,719 total calls for service — 887 of which were for seven different residential care facilities in Greenwood. This is about 15% of the department’s total call volume, Washel said.
The fees will serve as a deterrent for these types of calls, Washel said. To operate a fire engine, it costs GFD about $1,500 an hour and for a ladder truck, it costs about $2,000, according to schedules from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, highlighted by Washel during his presentation.
Once collected, the fees would go toward emergency medical operations and equipment, Washel said. Now that the fees are passed, letters will be sent to the facilities informing them of the fees.
Washel expects enforcement of the ordinance to begin by the end of October. Department records personnel need to be trained on the changes and there needs to be time for the residential care facilities to process the changes after the letters are sent next week, he said.
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